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All Rise...

Why would Appellate Judge Tom Becker believe in imitations when he can buy a genuine Romex watch on any street corner for $25?

The Charge

A woman, a man, a myth.

The Case

When Fenton (Jesse Aaron Dwyre) first sees Teresa (Vanessa Bauche, Amores Perros), she is looking over the
strawberries at the market where he works. There is a sadness about her that
touches him, and when he speaks to her, she tells him that she is in Montreal to
find her brother, Angel. It seems he came to the city on business from their
home in Mexico some months ago and has not been heard from since. His business
involved trying to get a payment from the produce company that sells
strawberries to the market.

Fenton offers to help Teresa. He's the adventurous type, something of a free
spirit—the market is only one of many part-time jobs he seems to
have—and he's attracted to her. Together, they set out in search of Angel,
putting together clues and tracing his steps throughout Montreal.

But the more Fenton learns, the less he seems to know—about Angel and
about Teresa.

Imitation is an intriguing, if not wholly successful, indie. Well
acted and wonderfully shot, Imitation is a nicely crafted series of
moments; unfortunately, the film never quite comes together.

Fenton and Teresa begin their search at the produce company, and Fenton
finds out a few things that immediately throw the mission off-kilter. Shortly
thereafter, he and Teresa have an argument, and she takes off with his car.
Armed only with a battered photo of Angel, Fenton decides to continue
investigating on his own. We see Teresa and Fenton in parallel—she, living
with some other Mexican women, hoping to start a seamstress business; he,
following leads that take him into Montreal's Spanish-speaking community (Fenton
doesn't speak Spanish).

Fenton's encounters are amusing and interesting, but there's a sense that
director Federico Hidalgo meant for them to be something more, something that
would add to the mystique of the Angel character. Everyone seems to have met
him, to have an anecdote of some sort, as though Angel is a kind of displaced
Charles Foster Kane. The editor of a Spanish-language newspaper, where Angel
applied for a job as advice columnist, even suggests that the man is a mad
genius. The film creates a quirky but satisfying tension as we wait to find out
the truth about Angel.

Since Angel is given an almost mythic build-up, the film needs a powerful or
at least revelatory conclusion. Unfortunately, the final act is seriously
lacking and leaves us wondering what all the fuss was about.

Among the extras is an "alternate opening scene." In my
experience, "alternate" scenes are either the same scene that's in the
film with a minor change or two, or they are complete throwaways. In this case,
the alternate opening would have changed the entire film. The perspective would
have been Teresa's, not Fenton's, and much of the "mystery" would not
exist. It's interesting to consider what the film might have been had it opened
with this scene, and clearly it's something that Hidalgo pursued seriously
enough that the scene was shot, edited, and ready to go (excerpts from it appear
in the trailer). This also might explain why the film feels, somehow,
incomplete, why the whole thing just peters out.

Up to the last act, it's a nice ride. Teresa and Fenton are engaging
characters, Montreal looks great, and the dialogue is clever and
unpretentious.

The disc offers a good visual presentation, although the stereo audio track
is a bit thin. In addition to the deleted scene, we get a segment from Hidalgo's
earlier film, A Silent Love, which also starred Vanessa Bauche, this time
as a Mexican "Internet bride" meeting, for the first time, the man
with whom she'd been corresponding in anticipation of marriage. This also looks
like a quirky and interesting film, and the excerpt made me interested in seeing
it.

Had Hidalgo made Imitation as a straight-up drama instead of an
ersatz noir, this would be an easy recommendation. Unfortunately, the
whole "mystery" angle just adds an unnecessary layer to what should
have been a quirky character study.